Like children before Christmas, staff here at the Leader-Post have been counting down the days until the launch of our reimagined newspaper and digital products. And as of today, we’ve only got 24 hours to go before we can tear open the wrapping and share our shiny, new products with readers.

But just like restless kids waiting for Santa, sleep hasn’t come easy for those of us who work at the Leader-Post. The past few months have seen a flurry of planning, strategizing and training, all leading up to a single date: Tuesday, Nov. 17. The plan is good, the team is solid and the work has been done, but the anticipation is almost overwhelming.

We can’t open the presents yet, but let’s take a look under the tree and give the boxes a shake …

Loyal readers of our 132-year-old print product will get a completely redesigned newspaper with a bright new logo and nameplate that reinforces our connection to the city. As always, local news will be the top priority, but with less of an emphasis on “what happened” and more on the “how and why.”

Tuesday’s paper will also see the launch of the NP in the Leader-Post section — your one-stop shop for national and international news from the National Post, home to some of Canada’s top journalists. It’ll also be the start of week’s worth of special local features, designed in advance to show off our bold new format.

On the digital side of things, we’ll be rolling out a faster, easier-to-navigate website, a redesigned tablet app and an innovative new smartphone app. Like the print edition, all of our reimagined platforms will bear the signature look of Postmedia’s multi-award-winning designer Gayle Grin, with input from Mario Garcia, the world’s top newspaper designer, and Winkreative, the acclaimed London-based design team.

The blueprint for these changes was laid out months ago, when Postmedia commissioned Ipsos to conduct a nationwide survey of more than 17,000 readers — including 1,000 from the Regina area — to better understand why, when and how people consume news and information. The knowledge gleaned from this detailed study has proven invaluable as we navigate the increasingly tumultuous seas of this new digital age.

I don’t have space here to go into everything we learned from the Ipsos survey, but I can share one key takeaway — different platforms have different readers. This might seem intuitive, but it hasn’t been the prevailing wisdom in the newspaper industry.

For years, we produced one set of content — stories, photos, opinion pieces — for dissemination across all platforms. Sure, we learned to add multimedia elements, especially video, to our digital packages, but we’ve essentially been giving readers the same menu of content whether they were reading us in the paper, online or on a mobile device or tablet.